...here’s the translated version [of the original news report]: “Partying g-men hired hookers, but
one refused to pay what he owed for extra time and got in an argument
over it. Then several busybodies who are more discreet when hiring their
hookers freaked out.” Period. End of story. C’mon, y’all, this isn’t
news, much less a “scandal” unless you consider buyer’s remorse
scandalous. I’ve been hired by a number of agents from the CIA, FBI,
Secret Service, Homeland Security, the TSA and probably half a dozen
other alphabet-soup agencies, not to mention their managers and the
congressmen who supervise them. I’m sure every one of my escort readers
can say the same thing. Agents also drink liquor, order room service,
watch movies, buy souvenirs, and use hotel toilets. Whoopie.
Prostitution isn’t even illegal in Colombia, so if not for these asinine
rules requiring virile, high-testosterone grown men to behave like nuns
nobody would even have heard of this story because the dude wouldn’t
have panicked and called attention to himself; he’d have just paid her
and she would’ve left. The end...

As McNeill notes, quoting from an article in Reason, the reporter driving this story--Ron Kessler--is racing around with his hair on fire over the national security implications of this and similar extracurricular episodes: possible blackmail, access to secret protocols, political assassination, the whole Tom Clancy apocalyptic clatter of pots and pans. On talk radio I've heard it theorized, i.e., pulled fact-free out of the caller's butt, that the escorts in Cartagena might have worked for a drug cartel or terrorist front, and then what a fine kettle of fish we'd be in, and it'd all be Obama's fault, because everything is.

As John Grant argues in Counterpunch, the press play for this scandal--though perfectly understandable, especially now that the NY Daily News has published bikini-babe photos of the prostitute at the heat of the story--is also an idiot diversion from the real thrust (if you'll pardon the expression) of the summit meeting in Colombia.

It’s
quite revealing that while profound historical discussions during the
summit focused on reforming the Drug War, lifting the outmoded Cold War
embargo of Cuba and violent abuses of trade unionists, that the really big story to come out of Cartagena is that US Secret Service agents and military security officers purchased sex.

And
who is thumping the scandal? None other than Rep. Peter King, chairman
of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the greatest War On
Terror whore in America.

The
heavy breathing soon began. Could any of the ladies contracted from the
Pley Club brothel have been al Qaeda agents? How was the President’s
safety affected? How much of a black mark was it on the honor of the
United States? Whose heads would have to roll?

Meanwhile,
back in Reality-land, Latin America was in the midst of a major,
future-oriented economic correction with the dynamic Brazil on the
leading edge. The requests for the US to reform its Drug War and to lift
the embargo on Cuba were in fact part of that greater dialogue, a
dialogue that includes questions about energizing the middle and lower
classes into a consumer engine that can lift all economic boats across
the continent.

This
is a deadly theme in 2012 in America. So it’s not surprising to see a
ridiculous scandal pop up to distract Americans from the real issues. As
was accomplished following World War Two, the US economy needs to
rebuild its working and middle classes, and the only way to do that is
to break the cycle of entrenched, right-leaning wealth. It’s a major
epochal struggle in Latin America, as it should be in the United States.
It was one of the big stories that should have come out of the summit,
and instead we get distractions about agents and whores.

America militantly insists on holding on to its immaturity, trying to fob it off on the rest of the world as Upholding Our Ideals, and the whole thing has become a tired farce.